On the multiplaten Z-buffer algorithm for ray tracing in high-frequency electromagnetic scattering computations

A ray tracer based on the multiplaten Z-buffer, (MPZ) algorithm is implentented and its performance is evaluated against the binary space-partition tree algorithm. Our results indicate that the computational complexity of the MPZ is independent of the number of facets, thus making it potentially, attractive for targets described by a large number of facets. A multi-aspect MPZ (MAMPZ) is also proposed to further enhance the speed performance of the MPZ algorithm. It is shown that by storing multi-aspect Z-buffers, . t is possible to significantly accelerate the ray-tracing time of the MPZ. (C) 2004 Wiley Periodicals. Inc.